Well, I finally downloaded the latest A17e, and have some first impressions.
There are a lot of things I really like:
- The graphics look much better (minus some occasional glitches which I'm sure will be worked out)
- New POIs are very good
- UI in general is better
- Generally speaking, the new perk system is a big improvement (but see below)
- I actually like the fact that the zombies don't drop loot, and are now purely a threat rather than a resource to be mined
- The fact that zombies get up quicker now leads to better combat (no more "shoot them until they go down then go in and club them" all the time)
- "Mining" gives fewer resources now, so no more 10x stacks of wood by night 7
- Haven't tried it yet, but the move to XPath for modding looks like it will be much easier to work with
But there are also some things I don't like (mainly stuff with perks):
- Mining motions (hitting grass/using stone axe) are way too slow, and it's not clear which perk improves that (or even if one does)
- Many perks are gated but don't say why (level requirement? Need to put skill point into general attribute?)
- Not clear what "Miner 69er" actually does now (the text refers to the "power attack" but you can't do that with mining tools? If not that, how is it different than "Mother Lode?")
- Seems to be no way to craft higher-quality tools (I put a point into Intellect but it did nothing - bug maybe?)
And, there is one thing that is
really bad now, and it's making the game far less enjoyable.
That is the "difficulty" of the game. I know there were lots of criticisms about the game being "easy" but this goes too far in the other direction. Now it's not so much "challenging" as "frustrating."
An example: Around day 5, a wandering horde of wolves spawned in. One ran up to me and pretty much killed me without warning.
This started off a tedious round of deaths. The wolves didn't wander from my backpack, so if I tried to get my stuff before the backpack disappeared, I immediately died again. The only solution was to re-spawn, making sure not to collect anything for a new backpack, then run to where the backpack was. Get wolves to chase you, and try to get far enough away from the backpack before they kill you again.
Re-spawn, rinse, repeat. Not fun in the least.
It was definitely not helped by the fact that there is now a de-buff where repeatedly dying will lower your stats. By the time I got my backpack, I think the timer on that de-buff was up to two hours real time.
Here's the problem: This new difficulty only affects you in the early game, and 7D2D was never too bad with the early game. It was the late game that was uninteresting. This new difficulty level doesn't help that, in fact it actually hurts.
By the time you're not subject to insta-death, you're at the point where you have nothing to do but turn 7D2D into Minecraft. It seems like the Pimps' solution is just to grind longer to get to the late game - but that's not a good solution. Until you reach the late game and get bored, you'll just be going through constant die-spawn-die-again cycles which are no fun at all.
It would be far better if 7D2D focused on making the late game
different, rather than ramping up the difficulty or increasing the grind. The inclusion of things like seasonal weather (where farms die off in the winter), or enemy NPCs that only show up after day 120, or things like that - those would make the late game more interesting.
That is all IMHO, of course. And, luckily, I think most of this can be done with mods (or "modlets"), so there's certainly hope for folks like me, even if TFP don't agree with my opinions.
